I have often wondered how and why so many people become "fanatics". When you use the word "fan", you usually refer it to someone who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular person or thing (dictionary definition). But the entire word, "fanatic", has a different, much stronger meaning. It refers to a "person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal for an extreme (....) cause". How can an idea turn into a belief and then into a real obsession? For a true fanatic it's not enough to just 'believe': such conviction becomes a real lifestyle, it imbibes all aspects of life, it determines behaviors, it encourages judgments on - more often condemnation of - different ideas or beliefs. A fanatic is a slave. Their obsession does not allow them to see the world as it is, splendid in its versatility, and people as they are, magnificent in their own individuality, which makes them free originals and not mere brain-washed followers.
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